How is it that an unelected monach spends more wisely than an elected government?

If only any of the Western governments had the self control of Her Majesty the Queen.

If the government were to grant an award to the public servant who has made the greatest effort over the past year to manage expenditure, Her Majesty the Queen would be a strong contender. The royal public finances, published this week, reveal that the cost of running the royal household has fallen over the past year by 5.3 per cent to £32.1 million. Proportionally, the Queen has made more cuts in one year than George Osborne intends to do over five.

Had the British government reduced its total costs by 5.3 per cent, the structural deficit would have been eliminated already — and the era of austerity ended.

And the French republican model?

The costs of running Nicolas Sarkozy’s household have almost trebled since he entered the Elysée Palace. Those who dragged Marie Antoinette to the scaffold would be astonished to see the airs and graces acquired by the leaders of the Republic. One ruling class has replaced another.

So many questions, so few answers, Julia

I am not an economist, but Henry Ergas, yet again, raises serious doubts about the Gillard governments’ carbon di-oxide tax.

The government has not allowed anyone to examine its model and therefore assess its assumptions. It reckons the USA will reach emission reduction targets without having to bother with a market-based mechanism. Apparently, as Ergas says:

its officials have discovered a way of getting the benefit of a carbon tax without actually having one.

The story gets worse.

THEY DON’T COUNT CLOSING HAZELWOOD

the model does not provide for the mandated decommissioning of the Hazelwood and possibly Yallourn power stations in Victoria. These generators have low operating costs and even with a rising carbon price would operate until at least 2025. Replacing them sooner requires substantial investment in generating plant and transmission. That will need to be paid for. But when?

OVERSEAS PERMITS THAT CAN’T BE USED

The model also assumes unlimited access to permits overseas. Those permits provide two-thirds of our mitigation to 2020, “resulting in lower economic costs”. But the government has now said it will cap purchases of foreign abatement at far less than that.

BORROWING … JUST LIKE GREECE

The modelling assumes emitters can borrow permits from the future. And borrow they do, on a scale that puts Greece to shame.

Yet again. When will we be able to rely on journalists to ask the questions that these facts pose?

A reference book on the Greens’ dangerous policies

Individually and collectively, the authors of this book reveal the totalitarian impulse at the heart of the Green’s ideology. It involves the control over, and the crowding out of, other spheres of national life by the massive expansion of government.

The book is a first in Australia, providing a much needed systematic analysis of the wide range of potentially damaging Greens policies if they were to be implemented.

REFORM? WHAT REFORM?

putting a price on carbon was her government’s equivalent to the floating of the dollar – a reform that would transform the country.

Well, no, not really. In economic terms, the definition of a reform is

re•form (r -fôrm )
v. re•formed, re•form•ing, re•forms
v.tr.1. To improve by alteration, correction of error, or removal of defects; put into a better form or condition.

This clearly is not what Julia Gillard is doing. The reform Gillard has in mind has no intention of improving the economy, and will certainly not have the sorts of benefits we now associate with the floating of the dollar.

It is in reality an ‘environmental reform, but unfortunately, the reform that Gillard has in mind also has no intention of improving the environment. According now to many experts and the Gillard government’s own advisers, it will have absolutely no measurable effect on the climate, the environment or anything else.

However, those journalists who object are admonished, and publicly told by the Prime Minister herself, no less, in what must be a National Press Club first:

Don’t write crap.
It can’t be that hard. And when you have written complete crap, I think you should correct it.

The mining boom is back. Jobs are plentiful and incomes are rising. As a result, the Australian economy is the envy of a developed world mired in sovereign debt. But yet — we are feeling miserable..

According to the latest consumer sentiment survey, confidence plunged to recession levels in July, posting the biggest fall since the dark days of the GFC. Economists blame concerns over the global economy, but social researchers also suggest Tony Abbott’s negative campaign against the carbon tax is also behind the sentiment slump.

Who would have guessed?

With the appropriate prompting in her questions, Sheryle Bagwell was able to establish from Hugh MacKay in an interview this morning on Radio National’s Breakfast that the dip in consumer confidence was due to the following factors:

there was a vacuum left from Kevin Rudd’s great moral challenge,

there is now an international financial meltdown anticipated,

there is a hung parliament,

humans are not rational,

people don’t like taxes: “they should have called it a “carbon penalty”,

Abbott has used a Goebbels’ propaganda tactic of “he who tells the story first is the one who is believed”,

when Gillard’s tax is in and the people stop overcompensating, the “mood might ease”.

Is it not passing strange that nowhere was it mooted in the interview that:

a majority of Australians think the carbon tax is too complicated,

they really do think it is bad and damaging,

it is useless because it will not change the climate at all,

it will not save the Barrier reef, or stop cyclones, or cyclical droughts and flooding rains,

the Prime Minister lied before the last election,

consequently, they are not listening to her and can’t bare the patronising obfuscation and unwillingness to answer questions directly and honestly,

her crazy money shoveling, churning, and redistribution, and crazy $10 billion renewable extravaganza of wasteful overspending, may have something to with the electorates ill ease.

Why do we pay for a national broadcaster with our taxes [over $1 billion itself] when it is incapable of understanding, let a lone explaining the disastrous polling of the Gillard government, or why the carbon tax is so bad …